New Age Sorcery
Mortals often associate the term “New Age” with trendy California pseudo-religions and images of hippies from the musical “Hair,” but the term is both broader and more sophisticated when applied to Anarch blood magic theories. Broadly speaking, New Age practices can include nearly any system of self-development and actualization. Historically, though, New Age is best described as a synthesis of Eastern and Western spirituality, infused with elements of parapsychology and pop science. Mortal scholars among the New Age movement claim to trace its history back to early Hermeticists like Paracelsus (a claim which provokes derision among the Tremere, especially those old enough to have actually met him). More recently they have linked themselves to Victorian Era occultists such as Helena Blavatasky (the founder of the Theosophy movement), George Gurdjieff (founder of the Fourth Way philosophy of self-actualization), and Swami Vivekananda (who introduced the Vedanta school of Hinduism to Western occultists). Regardless of its antecedents, the New Age movement did not truly take off until the 1970s when the United States experienced a sudden fad for a number of seemingly unconnected alternative forms of spirituality ranging from meditation to holistic health to belief in psychic phenomena, reincarnation and UFOs, all of which the media tended to label as “New Age beliefs.” By happy coincidence, the epicenter for this explosion of New Age thought, the American West Coast, was also home to one of the largest concentrations of Anarchs. Naturally, occult-minded Anarchs investigated and infiltrated the New Age movement. The result was a curious mixture of ancillae who entered New Age groups, often just looking for potential blood dolls, and neonates and fledglings who were members of such groups at the time of their own Embrace. Many of them soon realized that, whatever spiritual value New Age philosophy had in general practice, the addition of vitae actually seemed to make many of those practices work. From those early beginnings, New Age blood magic spread to every Anarch enclave on the globe. Undeniably quirky (even as vampiric occult philosophies go), the New Age movement naturally draws Malkavians like flies, as well as a significant number of Toreador poseurs who think that being a New Age guru will lend them gravitas. However, the school also attracts a surprising number of Brujah and Gangrel, as its emphasis on meditation and relaxation techniques is beneficial to Kindred who are at heightened risk of frenzy. The paths pursued by New Agers are usually those paths which can are most easily analogized to psychic phenomena or to the movement’s (usually garbled) take on neopaganism. Among serious practitioners, there is a rough parity between those Anarchs who sought out New Age blood magic in a quest for occult knowledge and those who were already members of New Age groups when the Embrace was forced upon them. Common Paths: * Green Path * Lure of Flames * Movement of the Mind * Path of Blood * Path of Corruption * Path of the Focused Mind * Path of Mars Category:Anarchs Category:Blood Sorcery